Edelweiss is rather nice

Jax and I had a tiff. The result of eight straight weekends of packing bags and galloping off to various corners of the kingdom on social errands- a wedding, the cricket-and-ale shindig in Shropshire, a book festival etc - had taken their toll. Like a weary married couple we longed for 48 hours in the comfort, or lack thereof, of the new flat, to sort out books and dust and the rest of the building work. Instead we had signed up for a friend’s Austrian-and-ski themed birthday party at his parents’ house in Berkhampstead. I was charged with sourcing costumes, a duty which I had completely ignored until last thing on Friday afternoon, and which had sent Jax, never a fancy-dresser at the best of times, into a tailspin. I had managed to steal a corset and skirt for myself from a theatrical costume cupboard at the final moment, but Jax was staring down the barrel of wearing her salopettes and a pair of sunglasses, distinctly sub-par for the amount of email preparations and reminders we had been given. We had trudged wearily off to the Mad World fancy dress shop on Old Street first thing on Saturday morning, where she had been forced to hand over fifty pounds for a child’s Bavarian dirndl and matching socks. Her luncheon plans had been cancelled and she demanded that we leave London earlier than the 6pm we had originally agreed. I had scheduled in a nap, which I was not prepared to sacrifice. She grumpily left the flat to watch the footie with Arty so that I could sleep and we were to meet at Euston station at the original designated time. Upon waking I saw that she had defiantly left two sleeping bags, the pop-up tent and the evening’s booze supply in the hallway. I called her on her mobile.
“Are you expecting me to carry all of this, plus my overnight bag to Euston station?”
“I couldn’t take all of that into a pub could I?” she retorted.

I hung up, guilty that I had let her down on the costumes and resentful that I was being punished. I lugged our portable accommodation onto the Tube and up to Euston. She met me at the escalators, all big eyes and silent apologies. She had already bought the tickets, plus two mini bottles of wine from Marks and Spencer. I silently apologised back and all was forgiven. If one of us were a man we’d have the perfect relationship. Although I suppose if I were a man I wouldn’t have wanted an afternoon nap and if she were a man she would have stayed to the end of the footie and been late in meeting me.

We changed on the train and laughed at each other’s outfits and drank the wine, excited again to be leaving London for a night. We got lost on the way to the house and ended up in Tesco Local in Berkhampstead, dressed as milkmaids, asking for directions. A lovely girl in a Corsa with her boss’ s dog in the back drove us up the hill and we arrived to find a huge Austrian themed marquee in the back of the garden, complete with a fake chalet frontage erected in the corner, and an Austrian bell-ringing society providing entertainment through the hog roast dinner. Everyone had made an effort with the costumes (with the exception of Sam who tried to pass off a green boiler suit as a bottle of Jagermeister) and I was thankful for Jax that she had spent the fifty quid. The family became the Von Trapps and played some traditional, and rather alarming Austrian music, mum on the accordion, dad on the fiddle, our friend Alex on trumpet and his sister on the saxophone. We all applauded, and drank the homemade punch rather too quickly. Harry had gone completely off brief and hired a Bungle costume (as in, from Rainbow). The DJ came on and proceeded to work his way relentlessly through Party Hits 1997 with classics such as Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, the Conga and the Macarena. We drank more punch and hit the dancefloor. Harry got caught up in his fake furry Bungle head and, temporarily blinded, fell backwards into the chalet frontage, bringing half of the guests and the chalet crashing to the floor. The DJ, quick off the mark, shouted down the microphone,
“Look! He’s literally brought the house down!”

And so it went until the last shot of Jagermeister had been drunk and the DJ played himself out with Ronan Keating’s When You Say Nothing at All. We abandoned the tent and hitched a lift back to London in a taxi with Sam and Harry. Bellies full of hog roast and punch we snuggled up in the cab and dozed to the ballads on Radio 2 as the first strains of sunlight appeared over the Berkhampstead skyline, tiff and effort having thoroughly paid off.